Mystery and Unidentified Parts

A few weeks ago I took a chance and bought a Middleburn RS3 crankset on eBay - the cranks themselves absolutely fine, and in fairly good nick. They were sold with chainrings (a bonus… possibly. I was only really interested in the cranks) a “Pace” 44t outer, a Middleburn 32t middle, and a “Pace” 22t granny ring.

“Why have you typed Pace in inverted commas?” I hear you ask…

Well, I’ve got a bit of a suspicion they weren’t actually made by Pace.

Firstly the design - I’ve never seen a Pace chainring with these machined scallops between the teeth (kinda resembles a bread knife). Dare I say it looks a bit ugly?

Secondly, on the outer ring, the engraved/lasered Logo seems oddly placed… kinda plonked there. Also note the way one of the scallops actually intersects the top of the “P”. (There isn’t even a logo on the granny ring - just the stamped tooth number)

The whole design doesn’t feel very Pace to my (admittedly untrained) eye!

So, Am I now the proud owner of a pair of “Rolla Cola” chainrings? Or have I stumbled upon a couple of rare Pace prototypes? (Maybe the designer was thumbing through the Argos catalog, came across the kitchen section, and drew inspiration from the bread knifes?!?)

Over to the Retrobike crew…
 

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A few weeks ago I took a chance and bought a Middleburn RS3 crankset on eBay - the cranks themselves absolutely fine, and in fairly good nick. They were sold with chainrings (a bonus… possibly. I was only really interested in the cranks) a “Pace” 44t outer, a Middleburn 32t middle, and a “Pace” 22t granny ring.

“Why have you typed Pace in inverted commas?” I hear you ask…

Well, I’ve got a bit of a suspicion they weren’t actually made by Pace.

Firstly the design - I’ve never seen a Pace chainring with these machined scallops between the teeth (kinda resembles a bread knife). Dare I say it looks a bit ugly?

Secondly, on the outer ring, the engraved/lasered Logo seems oddly placed… kinda plonked there. Also note the way one of the scallops actually intersects the top of the “P”. (There isn’t even a logo on the granny ring - just the stamped tooth number)

The whole design doesn’t feel very Pace to my (admittedly untrained) eye!

So, Am I now the proud owner of a pair of “Rolla Cola” chainrings? Or have I stumbled upon a couple of rare Pace prototypes? (Maybe the designer was thumbing through the Argos catalog, came across the kitchen section, and drew inspiration from the bread knifes?!?)

Over to the Retrobike crew…
You could email pace a photo and see what they say?

I've seen that ugly scalloped style before, but it wasn't branded pace - early pace had the little notch at the bottom of the groove.
"Extruder groove"

Did absolutely nothing - i wore a pair out from new, no different to quality rings without

Tooth profile looks either pre-index or cheap.
The 44 looks stamped, the logo etched - seems illogical to use 2 processes when 1 would do, so looks like the etching was done elsewhere to manufacture.

If you try to bend it, you can usually tell if it's quality alloy
 
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